Category: Education & Employability
October 17th, 2012 by matthias
This is more of an update, as I haven’t found a calendar / scheduling application yet that announces dates in a format that I’d like it to. So in this post I’ll map out my upcoming speaker engagements in the next two months. I can’t really say what I’ll be learning just yet (so it’s a bit off topic) but I’m looking forward to some stimulating discussions and live tweets – and some valuable lessons to share.
There are two slots on employability and higher education policy, wearing (mostly) my hat as chair of PlaceNet – Placements in Industry Network:
My first (short) talk is at an event on ‘Assessing the recommendations in the Wilson Review – internships, work placements and further collaboration between universities and businesses’. The second one is about ‘Policy into Practice: Latest graduate employability initiatives in action’. Also, I have an invite to speak at a National Union of Students event at the end of the month in Manchester. I’ll do an update when I get more details.
As usual around this time of year, I will be delivering a talk about using social media and employability to alumni of London Metropolitan University and next month to students and staff at the University of East London. And I’ll be at the Futuretrack Conference in early November. So, a busy two months.
PS: Oh yes, today (17/10/12), I’ll be part of the NASES live webchat ‘Getting ready to find a job using social media’
Posted in Education & Employability, Talks
October 1st, 2012 by matthias
Not a week goes by in which ‘young people’ aren’t blamed for being unwilling to learn, idle, undisciplined or simple ‘lacking the skills’ for employment. They end up in alledgedly shoddy teaching institutions, doing Mickey Mouse degrees, or never engage with the employment market at all. Being part of the CIPD advisory panel for their excellent ‘Learning to Work’ campaign (check my bit.ly bundle on this) has taught me a number of lessons – and that even though I have been sceptical about this youthphobia for a long time. The first one is that none of us is immune to it – it may be a feature of middle age, but even I feel occasionally challenged by the same behaviours I displayed when being out and about under the influence of being 15. It’s all too easy to telling each other stories about teenagers not showing up for time and being glued to their mobile phones – behaviours I’ve seen trained professionals engage in on a regular basis. Yet, having worked on the employability frontline of higher education – arranging placements for London Met students, see common perceptions about institutions and qualifications above – has taught me is that ‘young people’ are a reflection of how ‘we’, the rest of society, treat ‘them’. ‘We’ react well to attempts of hearing us out and giving us the chance to contribute – so do ‘they’. What’s holding young people back are not only the lack of chances available – that’s really not their fault. Whenever the question of role models is being brought up – well, that’s ‘our’ responsibility again – I wonder how we ended up so distrustful of those who will be our workforce. And this is exactly where we should put in the work, offering chances to engage, opportunities to make mistakes, and mentor to succeed. As a recent poll of the 68% of employers who had given a chance to a young person in the last 12 months, conducted by the CIPD found out – 91% liked what they saw. Perhaps it’s our perception that’s not fit for purpose after all, not those who trying to figure out ‘our’ world for the first time.
Posted in Commentary, Education & Employability
September 24th, 2012 by matthias
As part of social media week, I will be talking about using Twitter as a job search tool. I have written – actually tweeted about this – when John Lees asked me to contribute to his relaunched book ‘How To Get A Job You’ll Love’. I set myself a challenge then – keeping to no more than 1400 characters, I wrote 10 tweets on the topic. To stay in keeping with the purpose of this blog, I will map out what I’ve learnt so far about Twitter as a tool for job hunters. Here it goes: Firstly, Twitter is an excellent search engine – job hunters have to be constantly informed about their sector, potential employers and news that could affect them – see my recent blog post on that – Twitter gives you this in real time, and often from the horse’s mouth via people who talk about just there current experiences. Secondly, it helps you build an online presence with relatively little effort – via retweets and mentions – pushing yourself up in search results on relevant topics. Thirdly – while doing one and two above – Twitter helps you get in touch with people who may be relevant to your search – or those who may interview you shortly. Not a week goes past when social media – but specifically Twitter – does not give me or someone I know a significant benefit which goes far beyond that cup of green tea. Can you find a job using Twitter? I work with someone who did. Can you find a job using Twitter? Yes, there are enough jobs accessible via Twitter to replace any job board. Can you find a job using Twitter? It won’t give it to you, but using it certainly helps you a lot along the way.
Posted in Education & Employability, Social Media
September 4th, 2012 by matthias
Some time ago when holding a job search resources workshop to a group of international students, I repeated a piece of advice which I often have given before: ‘In order to become better candidates, professionals … just better people, it’s essential to read newspapers.’ An especially active student (both participative and with regards to texting during class) smiled at me and told me ‘we are a new generation – we don’t read the news or are interested in politics’. My swift response to that was that maybe this reluctance might contribute to her not yet having a job. Besides a moment of classroom banter, there was a deeper point which I was trying to make – and it has hit me this morning again when reading the news about how London Metropolitan University students are being sanctioned for perceived failures of their institution by the UK Border Agency. While I agree with the student that paper-based newspapers may be on the way out, it is their content that matters even more than it used to, to candidates and students. It’s a classic trick question in interviews to ask which relevant news source a candidate reads – invariably they are given the FT, the Economist, etc. – and then to follow up asking for details on an industry relevant current news story. This weeds out the only superficially prepared candidate from the ones who are closer to acting like the professionals they want to become. I would go beyond that though and say knowing your news – and getting daily, if not hourly – updates, all day, every day, is essential to function as a candidate, employee/r and professional, just in order to keep abreast of anything that might impact on them. Basically, one has to be in the process of conducting a constant PESTL analysis. To stick to the current example: changes to the UK student visa conditions have been going on for a long time, and it’s fairly clear that political considerations seem to trump the economic argument that international student bring in something like £4bn into the UK economy. So the legal and regulatory framework has been shifting for a while, based on a policy to reduce the number of international students coming into the country – impacting on exactly those directly when applying, or just simply wanting to finish their courses. Is this knowledge that can quickly be grasped in its complexity on the evening TV news? No, understanding this requires constant reading, updating and following relevant news sources. I don’t do this on paper either – I use Twitter, RSS feeds, LinkedIn, and several blogs to know what is going on in my field, but also in society which might impact me personally, perhaps even just later today. I used to work at London Met, and I harbour warm feelings towards my old colleagues and the many committed students I have met there. It is sad to see that they are now in maelstroem of the political, economical, social – admittedly not so much technical – but certainly legal kind. But there it is – we can learn from this that we need to be constantly on the lookout what is happening in politics and wider society, as it may affect us quicker than we think.
Posted in Education & Employability
July 7th, 2012 by matthias
I recently turned German tutor. Not that I was exceptionally good, or a paragon of good behaviour at school, but I guess as a German I qualified, if not by nature, but at least by nurture. I helped a teenager prepare for an important exam, which included reciting a couple of self-written paragraphs to an audience of teachers. I was honoured to be asked, and also that my tutee was apparently well prepared, and showed enthusiasm for learning what I’ve come to realised is a hard language to learn. We never met, but exchanged emails – a form of communication less natural to her generation than mine – and spoke over the phone to work on pronunciation. When helping her prepare, I picked up a couple of comments from her along the lines of ‘oh, I need to show that I can use the correct tenses – I’ll get a B for that’, and ‘I don’t need to do this – this will only get me a C, but I need to do that, as it will give me a B’. That struck me as rather strategic, and while I remember trying to gain as much knowledge from my teachers in school what we were going to be tested at, we never got a glimpse into the marking scheme – and classes that did had to resit their exams. And, instinctively, I would say that was right. While I enjoyed my tutee’s enthusiasm for language learning, I had the feeling that this way of learning for the exam may be limiting her possible attainment – it is after all about mastering the subject, not the exam. And the self-limitation I think is apparent – never did we talk about what would achieve an A, for that matter. Now I don’t care about grades that much anymore, but I do care very much about learning and gaining knowledge as its own reward – and this outcomes based approach potentially limits the real impact made by the learning experience. I’ve often heard that school is governed by learning for tests and exams, and I think I’ve just seen that happening; and I think it may short-change a generation of learners who will be confronted with life-long learning to adapt to ever changing demands of an ever more flexible workplace. While I was impressed by my tutee’s ability to strategize at a young age, as was her language skill – but being taught to having to strategize to secure a B won’t do in the long term. And I think this is where schools should be rethinking their approach – not adding more ‘rigorous’ exams.
Posted in Education & Employability
April 4th, 2012 by matthias
Disclaimer: this is as always a personal account, and no – I’m not talking against well balanced and well informed careers and study advice; this post is about finding a balance between sufficient and relevant information and following your instinct.
If the Key Information Sets coming in later this year would have been available, my student and professional life would have looked different – most probably worse. I didn’t study at my alma mater, I studied against her. I chose a pretty obscure combination of subjects, and everyone with a proper job (including some of our own professors) told me I therefore would never have a job. Conditions were dire, pedagogy in many instances obscure, resources scarce, and my cohort had an attrition rate of about 90%. Employment rates after 6 months – which were never measured – must have been scary. Careers support was provided for us poor sods who had chosen humanities degrees, because without it, we’d be completely hopeless. There was none for those who were studying the ‘right’ subjects – STEM subjects mostly. At a German state university of 20 years ago we were not clients or customers, we had no concept of consumer type ‘choice’, and we were often treated with contempt. Needless to say – I loved pretty much every minute of it. I did struggle, but I was freed from what I had experienced as a restrictive and conformist school system which was purely about outcomes and performance. See where I’m coming from? Only at university I learnt how to think and reflect – not because it was a learning outcome, but because I had to be able to deal with the demands of our ivory tower style professors whose focus was their research, not their teaching. There were exceptions – especially amongst the PhD pursuing assistants and lecturers – and they really helped me find my way through that jungle. I was awash with information – mostly of the contradicting kind – and I had to learn to interpret it, for which I was given time. What’s that to do with the KIS? Simples – if I had a host of prepackaged data to tell me where my university stood in comparison to others, if I had been subjected to having to interpret the ‘consumer advice label’ on my course while worried uncles and aunts would hover over me, I may have cracked and studied the ‘right’ thing. I don’t envy students who these days have to deal with this flood of tailored information, supposedly helping to make choices as a consumer. As the head of our – excellent – careers service said, it’s best to study something you care about and that will enrich your thinking. Don’t try to anticipate the marketplace years down the line, and then ignore the flood of well meaning advice based on pointless statistics.
Posted in Commentary, Education & Employability
December 1st, 2010 by matthias
I’ve often wondered why I’m not a big fan of careers fairs. And talking with my colleagues – and running a small tailored networking event with some of our finance students yesterday – I’ve found yet another reason: Careers fairs serve large audiences and help employers to establish a presence with graduates. Yet, they are limited by the common practice by recruiters that after chatting to the students they drive them to the their website for online applications – essentially back to square one for the student. But that’s not the only disadvantage – it’s also a question of numbers: We’ve done careers fairs at Regent’s College with, let’s say 3-4 finance employers (we have space for about 18 stalls and a wide range of courses), and 500 students visiting. Yet last night, we had about 10-15 interested students networking with 7-8 finance professionals. So, not only do career networking events help students get around the ‘company line’ in a more informal setting – they also get a much higher exposure. Do they get a job offer and can hand in their CV? Nope – yet, they can’t do that at a careers fair either. Do they get business cards and LinkedIn contacts? Yes, they do. So in my book that’s networking events 2 : careers fairs 0.
Posted in Education & Employability
November 26th, 2010 by matthias
This is a very short one (I’m hopefully getting better at this ‘one paragraph only’ rule): I’ve just discovered www.academia.edu through an excellent article by Sarah Cunnane in the THE on social media. It’s aimed at academics and researchers, and has apparently become one of the sector’s largest. Never heard of it – certainly learnt that today; and I will certainly learn more about it very soon. I’m very keen on pushing forward social media usage at Regent’s College, and this seems like yet another cool tool.
Posted in Education & Employability, Work life
August 2nd, 2010 by matthias
In her excellent article ‘Take note as another learning discipline slides away’ on the THE, Tara Brabazon shares not one, not two, but three valuable lessons:
- How to edit an assignment – instruction to students: read the guide, read it again, put into practice.
- How the dependency on prefabricated notes and slides is impacting on the students’ ability to take notes – instruction to all presenters: less is more.
- That outcomes based learning doesn’t guarantee, or actually foster, learning.
Thanks to @lornajwalker for tweeting this.
Posted in Education & Employability
July 30th, 2010 by matthias
Watch it now, it’s 15 minutes well spent! Besides being entertaining as always, Paul Redmond summarises the impact of the credit crunch on graduate recruitment. The most memorable take home message was that the large employers have won the ‘war for talent’. And in order to succesfully start their careers, students need to play the system they are confronted with, making most effective use of their networks.
Posted in Education & Employability